The only thing that seems "unfair" is if they have to slow mo and zoom way in to see a movement. If it can't be seen in real time at a normal distance how can anyone reasonably assume that the player would see the movement. That's probably where I'd "draw the line" as it were. I would hazard a guess that a large number of players have had their ball move very similar to what Tiger's did however without the advanced technology it was never seen. So yeah, if you have to use advanced technology to prove the ball moved, then probably shouldn't be a penalty, however if it's clear with normal playback that the ball moved then penalize away.

The only thing that seems "unfair" is if they have to slow mo and zoom way in to see a movement. If it can't be seen in real time at a normal distance how can anyone reasonably assume that the player would see the movement. That's probably where I'd "draw the line" as it were. I would hazard a guess that a large number of players have had their ball move very similar to what Tiger's did however without the advanced technology it was never seen. So yeah, if you have to use advanced technology to prove the ball moved, then probably shouldn't be a penalty, however if it's clear with normal playback that the ball moved then penalize away.

yes it is out of line. I didn't say he should not occur a penalty. the ball clearly moved when zoomed in on. just like the the person hitting the kid should be punished. I guess what I don't like is the fact all players are not under the watchfull eye of the tv viewing public.

The number of people calling PGA Tour events after seeing possible rules violations has gone up since Tiger Woods took what turned out to be an illegal drop at the Masters. That doesn't mean the number of violations is increasing.

"The rate of irrelevant call-ins has gone up dramatically, too," said Tyler Dennis, the Tour's vice president of competition.

What might seem like a simple solution — have a rules official monitor the telecast to look for any violations that cause fans to call from home — is not that simple. Years ago, the Tour had one official devoted to watching the tournament on TV and found it to be a waste of time when no one called.

"We constantly talk about it," Dennis said Tuesday. "Because we're running 50-odd events a year, we want to use our resources in the best way we can. It's far better to have someone on the course than having someone watching the telecast."

Isn't slow play already an issue for the Tour? If players are calling in rules officials often, how does that help?

Solutions -

1. Unmarked ghost officials randomly following groups

2. Simplify Rules

3. Mandatory Rules Seminars for Players - monthly - anything to get these guys to focus.

4. Rules are Rules - nothing wrong with call-ins; it's whether the PGA Tour Rules Officials screen and pay attention to call-ins. Problem is crank calls. So I'd only give the phone number to former tour players or certain professionals.

Golf is an odd sport in that you seem to have both rules officials and self-policing. But when you add in the HD camera that can see things that a player could easily miss--particularly when that thing is as inconsequential as a ball moving 1/8th of an inch, it causes problems. If Tiger saw his ball move, he could have replaced it for a 1 stroke penalty, right? Instead he got 2?

Nobody wants to see a rule be violations going unpunished, but the rules are intended to ensure fair play and it isn't exactly fair when you have HD cameras following around some guys much more than others. Imagine if the NFL employed additional refs to watch out for PI by one team but not the other.

Golf is an odd sport in that you seem to have both rules officials and self-policing. But when you add in the HD camera that can see things that a player could easily miss--particularly when that thing is as inconsequential as a ball moving 1/8th of an inch, it causes problems. If Tiger saw his ball move, he could have replaced it for a 1 stroke penalty, right? Instead he got 2?

Nobody wants to see a rule be violations going unpunished, but the rules are intended to ensure fair play and it isn't exactly fair when you have HD cameras following around some guys much more than others. Imagine if the NFL employed additional refs to watch out for PI by one team but not the other.

Actually the rules are intended to ensure correct play. Fairness is never even mentioned as a function of the rules of golf.

It is ignoring the truth. You know something to be true, and you're discarding it simply because it happened to be recorded by a camera and not reported "live" by one or more of a special group of people.

The jury comment was not out of line. Someone runs over a kid. There's no evidence (or it's all circumstantial) that it's them, except that they're caught on tape because this intersection happened to have an ATM at it recording the scene. By your logic, every intersection doesn't have a video camera, so it's unfair to punish the person just because they happened to get caught on tape.

You may play by the rules, but you're letting others escape playing by the rules simply because of how their infractions are noticed.

Of course he doesn;t even KNOW if he is REALLY playing by the rules since he does not have an HD camera following hi every moe which is then scrutinized by thousands.

Quote:

Originally Posted by iacas

They already have a rule for that. New this year, IIRC.

The new rule (decision?) prevents disqualification but it does not stop the imposition of the penalty strokes for a violation not seen by the player but revealed through HD video. Which is fine with me.

Of course he doesn;t even KNOW if he is REALLY playing by the rules since he does not have an HD camera following hi every moe which is then scrutinized by thousands.

The new rule (decision?) prevents disqualification but it does not stop the imposition of the penalty strokes for a violation not seen by the player but revealed through HD video. Which is fine with me.

If he did call a rules official and was given the ok to hit, could they still impose a penalty after? If so that doesn't seem right. Once a ruling is made it should be final.

A question for those who are against: Consider a case like Tiger's this weekend, only instead of the ball moving a tiny bit, it moved a couple inches. I.e., in such a way that there can be no doubt that either the player is lying about it having moved, or honestly was not watching the ball when it did. But the camera still caught it. And the player says "No, it didn't move". How would you rule? Point being, no matter how the evidence was obtained, we know the ball moved. So are you only going to go by what the player says, are you only going to go by what the evidence shows, or are you going to take it on a case-by-case basis, and make a judgement call on whether the player should have been able to see the ball move or not? (Ball movement is just one example - the same questions apply to any rules infraction.)

Seems to me there are serious issues with only going by what the player *believes* happened, and just as serious issues with having to make a judgement call that depends on how much the ball moved, should the player have seen it, etc.

That has always been the way it is, and that is what we should live with. I have always been against people calling in. While they are right in a lot of cases, the scrutiny isn't equitable. Let the player call it himself, and guys in the group or officials can question it. The guys who willfully take advantage will get caught and weeded out.

Of course he doesn;t even KNOW if he is REALLY playing by the rules since he does not have an HD camera following hi every moe which is then scrutinized by thousands.

The new rule (decision?) prevents disqualification but it does not stop the imposition of the penalty strokes for a violation not seen by the player but revealed through HD video. Which is fine with me.

If he did call a rules official and was given the ok to hit, could they still impose a penalty after? If so that doesn't seem right. Once a ruling is made it should be final.

The RO is supposed to use all of the evidence at his disposal to make his ruling. That includes calling back to the committee and having them check the video evidence, if any. It doesn't even have to stop play, as the player could invoke rule 3-3 and finish the hole with 2 balls and continue play while waiting for the committee decision.

This is a difficult situation to make a blanket statement and have it cover all of the concerns most of us have. Do I like the viewer call ins? Not really. Can I pass on letting a clear violation go unpenalized just because nobody but the viewing audience saw it? Nope, can't find any good justification for that either. I'd rather see better oversight at the event, a crew with no other function than to watch the video feed and make timely calls when there is a question. The Tour can afford to put a few more bodies on such a job to rotate on fairly short shifts so that boredom doesn't set in. It's unfortunate that our game seems to have come to this on the professional level, but I think it's time for a bit more proactive involvement by the officiating crews.

Yeah, pretty much agree with this. While I'm definitely on the side of not allowing or taking call-ins, I'm not happy with the idea of ignoring obvious rules violations either.

Except I disagree with the last sentence. The only thing that I think the game has "come to" is better and more TV coverage. What happened to Tiger this year (yes, I know it's not really happened TO him, so much as stuff he's done, but whatever) has always been happening, just not under a microscope. You don't even have to go back before TV, and , heck, you don't even have to go back to before Tiger ... just take this incident and put it back 6 or 7 years to prior to HD cameras being used for golf coverage. Then when the worm cam is zoomed into Tiger trying to move the stick, nothing is clearly visible, Tiger says "yeah, I started to move that stick, saw that the ball oscillated, then decided better of it and left it there." "So, you are sure it only oscillated? Is it possible that it changed positions?" "No, not possible, it definitely only oscillated." And that would be the end of it. No penalty, no controversy.

The same is true in the NFL with instant replay. First thing that comes to mind is the game winning touchdown that Calvin Johnson "dropped" a couple of years ago. That type of thing has always happened, its just that HD and slow motion have come along, and have made everything more visible.

Quote:

Originally Posted by iacas

Tiger at the BMW this year? Not a call-in (it wasn't even shown on the broadcast).

Wait, what?!?!?! While I was typing one of my earlier replies in this thread - last night, golf channel on in the background - they were talking about this exact story in regards to Tim Finchem. Then they cut to a bunch of players interviews and their reactions to Tiger's penalty. (Stricker, Dustin Johnson, Watney, Kuchar) The implication of the story was CLEARLY that Tiger's penalty was a result of a call-in.

If you are correct, then A) Why would Tim Finchem be saying what he's saying now, and why would it be a big story? and B) Why would TGC resort to shady journalism like that?

Who do they think they are ... CNN?? Fox?? MSNBC?? Come on, guys, you're better than that!!!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr. Desmond

1. Unmarked ghost officials randomly following groups

The only reason to have unmarked officials would be to catch people doing things that they wouldn't otherwise do in front of marked officials. This suggests that there is a cheating problem on the PGA tour. I disagree with that. I don't think this is necessary.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jeremie Boop

If he did call a rules official and was given the ok to hit, could they still impose a penalty after? If so that doesn't seem right. Once a ruling is made it should be final.

I was going to say that calling in a rules official is silly because they are they to help apply and understand the rules, not help make a judgment that they didn't see. If Tiger says his ball only oscillated, then they kinda have to take Tiger's word for it. However, fourputt points out that I'm wrong below ...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fourputt

The RO is supposed to use all of the evidence at his disposal to make his ruling. That includes calling back to the committee and having them check the video evidence, if any. It doesn't even have to stop play, as the player could invoke rule 3-3 and finish the hole with 2 balls and continue play while waiting for the committee decision.

That makes perfect sense. If he called over a rules official, he could simply inform him that just in case the ball actually moved, let's be safe and invoke rule 3-3. If the video shows an infraction, then it would only cost him 1 stroke.

Not sure how in the world he is going to set up his second ball though (the one he's supposed to "replace") because that lie will be obliterated by his first shot.

Yeah, I think maybe we stick with Brandon's idea that you simply just eliminate the call-ins. That isn't "ignoring rules violations" but rather simply "not allowing the public to help us notice rules violations." Once a violation is known to them, then, yes, I have a hard time suggesting that they ignore that violation, but perhaps, the fairer way to police everything is just to leave the public out of it.

Well okay, but then what are you actually accomplishing? You still have the bias against guys like Tiger who have more cameras covering them.

It would be different from what we have today, but only in the sense that the PGA Tour can save $20 a month by dropping a phone line.

Wait, what?!?!?! While I was typing one of my earlier replies in this thread - last night, golf channel on in the background - they were talking about this exact story in regards to Tim Finchem. Then they cut to a bunch of players interviews and their reactions to Tiger's penalty. (Stricker, Dustin Johnson, Watney, Kuchar) The implication of the story was CLEARLY that Tiger's penalty was a result of a call-in.

If you are correct, then A) Why would Tim Finchem be saying what he's saying now, and why would it be a big story? and B) Why would TGC resort to shady journalism like that?

Who do they think they are ... CNN?? Fox?? MSNBC?? Come on, guys, you're better than that!!!!

My understanding is that, while it wasn't gleaned from the telecast, it was a call-in. I believe somebody picked it up with a high-def camera on-site. Who, I don't know. Probably a professional. Lots of legal cameras at Tour events, as I have found out from marshalling. They are everywhere, very imposing and entitled.

My understanding is that, while it wasn't gleaned from the telecast, it was a call-in. I believe somebody picked it up with a high-def camera on-site. Who, I don't know. Probably a professional. Lots of legal cameras at Tour events, as I have found out from marshalling. They are everywhere, very imposing and entitled.

My understanding was that it couldn't have been a call-in because the footage was taken by a PGATour.com employee.

The only reason to have unmarked officials would be to catch people doing things that they wouldn't otherwise do in front of marked officials. This suggests that there is a cheating problem on the PGA tour. I disagree with that. I don't think this is necessary.

Disagree.

It does not suggest a cheating problem. It does suggest the stakes are high - we're talking millions of dollars here in prize money and endorsements - and the idea is to let players know that the thought of bending the rules is not tolerated. It is a recognition that people are human when confronted with the temptation of mega $$$$, and they may let something slide that may seem inconsequential.

Employers send ghost customers to their place of business to evaluate the behavior of their employees. Employees learn that ghost customers will make an appearance. It motivates them to conform to company rules. It does not suggest that employees will cut corners or treat customers unkindly. It does keep them on their toes.

The Tour also tried having Officials view the telecast as it occurred, and found it a waste of time.

___

As to how the limited number of officials may affect play and rules...

“There is almost never a dull moment,” said Slugger White, the former touring pro and a veteran of 30 years as a tour official.

That might come as news to the game’s detractors. But to the eight regular PGA Tour officials charged with making it all work for the 156 players in the field at this week’s Wells Fargo Championship, the occasional hair-raising moment is expected at the Quail Hollow Club.

“When we’re trying to get 156 players this week, which means there is going to be 26 groups on 18 holes,” White said. “You’re going to wait. Play is going to be slow. Those are the facts. People say we aren’t doing our job?”

Cracked Mickey Bradley, who was riding in White’s cart: “Twenty-six groups on 18 holes? That’s an eight-pound ham in a five-pound can.

Wait, what?!?!?! While I was typing one of my earlier replies in this thread - last night, golf channel on in the background - they were talking about this exact story in regards to Tim Finchem. Then they cut to a bunch of players interviews and their reactions to Tiger's penalty. (Stricker, Dustin Johnson, Watney, Kuchar) The implication of the story was CLEARLY that Tiger's penalty was a result of a call-in.

It was the PGA Tour's own production company. They filmed it, and after the round were reviewing the footage they shot, and they called Tiger on it. Nobody called in.

TV audiences never saw that footage until after the penalty had been assessed. It was an "inside job" so to speak.